4Rs Grant Application
=AlphaLab Application= : Please complete all of the required fields below. : Just the questions are at Biz Questions from Alph Lab. ---- Product/concept and Market 1.) Please provide a brief description (2-3 sentences) of your company and product/concept.* The proposed software development company, , creates applications that act as handshakes for the migration of data to wikis, from wikis and among wikis. The start-up model leverages wikis as central informational depot. * Data travels from content elsewhere through the to an appropriate wiki. * Data travels from one wiki to another wiki with the help of tools. * Data travels from the wiki to other products, such as books and hand-held devices published with the help of . * Data from a wiki can also interact with other data sets, such as voter-registration information. enables the interactions. * Data for wikis is generated by real-world outreach. Conferences, radio shows and lecture series generate materials that funnel to wikis. ---- 2.) Please provide a more detailed description of your company and product/concept. What is new or unique about it?* leverages wikis as a central theme in the early phases. The software development of has two purpose of its products: publishing wiki content and creating applications for interacting with wikis. # Publishing wiki content: ## Two existing wikis, one about local community / civics / politics (http://FixPA.wikia) and the other about sports, (http://AforAthlete.wikia.com) are further developed. ## The expands its wiki offerings on the local / political front with the Fix Network. ##The business model builds next to the phenomena of Wikipedia.org, the flagship wiki. The scaffold to Wikipedia.org in a number of ways. ### Wikiapedia.org is for neutral point of view knowledge. drives content of all points of view. See APOV vs. NPOV and 4Rs+Wikia+Wikipedia. # The applications come in many forms. ## Applications can be robust, stand-alone double-click software packages that are deployed on tablet PCs with archived data. ## Applets, helper apps, plug ins for existing tools and even menu-bar widgets are expected. ### A wide range of multimedia file formats are hosted by wikis and . The data handled by needs to be of various content types including text, audio, video, graphics, GIS, maps and databases. ## The applications and utilities of also represent outreach dealings. ### The business framework includes outreach and educational opportunities within communities so as to drive awareness to wikis and teach of the benefits of richer interactions with wikis. ### These, real-world handshakes promote wikis, tech-literacy, connected lifestyles and the goods and services. Few in the marketplace have built a business to craft widgets for wikis. This customized software development expertise will make stand out. Few in the marketplace are finding success in battling Wikipedia.org. Some have tried and failed. Others are still waging a fight. However, the approach of building wikis within Wikia.com and to closely associate, and scaphold upon, Wikipedia.org is different. The promotions and outreach plans are unique to the marketplace. Wikipedia.org, as well as most of the others, are passive and are content to reside only on the internet with little promotions. Historically, Wikipedia.org's outreach has been to seek donations from volunteers. will be aggressive in promotions, outreach, earned media PR, programming, book sales, hosting radio shows, recruitment of content. Our volunteers and social media connections, given the help with automation, is unique. The sales model has a B to B component, a difference in the social media and wiki marketplace. Business-to-business sales do not happen much in the bottoms-up, activist driven, wiki world. The others, such as Wikipedia.org and Wikia.com, have consumer driven sales / buy-in. With w:c:AforAthlete an individual can still choose to help, or not, own his own. However, with , given a powerful suite of avatars, applets and automation utilities, businesses, (i.e., a daily newspaper, TV News station) can opt-in as well. The early investors, such as AlphaLab.org, for will provide the means to allow for an approach from to all the content providers in Pennsylvania. The mainstream media professionals in Pennsylvania will have opportunities to hear of the new approach for building value in their investments by allowing the handshakes to occur. ---- 3.) What problem(s) is your product/concept going to solve? How do you know there is a problem(s)? (include market trends, data, etc.)* Problem: Today's media landscape has an abundance of one-sided discussions among fractionalized audiences. Efforts of can get folks onto the same page. The tools put wide ranging sources within the same domain. helps pull various opinions and any individual into the same networked discussion. Various views are given their own space to unfold, but other opinions are always only a click and page away. American citizens and voters are hungry for a "commonwealth of knowledge" that exists for everyone's benefit. : helps to "connect the dots" with issue pages linking to all sorts of platform and opinion statements. : With , recruitment to all citizens, voters and opinion-shapers is possible. The works to solve the problem of only preaching to the choir. The Fix Network give all US residents a home while it accommodates all points of view. : The sports and fitness wiki, A for Athlete can appeal to more universal audiences regardless of poltical options and locations. ::The Red State blog is popular with those on the right. It would only promote to conservative target markets. Problem: YouTube and Blip.TV content with political messages is growing. However, video sites do not have robust organizational and cataloging system. and the tools of can work to resolve navigational constraints by linking with specific topic areas. Today's digital and media landscape has serious problems in sustaining a shared conversation. aims to "connect the dots." In the early days of the internet, the Usenet, ARPANET, LISTSERV, and bulletin board services (BBS) deployed FAQs documents and Summary postings. Those practices have died and the quality of content has suffered. However, the wiki is the place for modern FAQs and Summary statements. can sustain conversations by injecting FAQs and Summary statements in its process of handling handshakes of content from other sources to the wikis. helps a sagging newspaper industry. helps content creators, especially bloggers, podcasters, a vbloggers. Podcasts and radio shows are not easily archived on the internet today. Interviews with local candidates on local talk radio shows are seldom preserved. The can take streams of radio shows known for local newsmaker interviews and reposition that content in places in the various wikis to allow it to reach more interested people for months and years to come. helps the overall community by sustaining conversations. helps with the recruitment of new candidates to public office. helps the voters, journalist, community activists. services and tools would give campaign workers insights to citizens they encounter within a community. enables a handshake of voter ID information obtained from the county board of elections coupled with other content, such as letters to the editor from local newspapers penned by that individual or another household member. helps the other wiki flagships, such as Wikipedia.org, Wikinews, and Wikia.com. ---- 4.) What one thing about the initial version will get early customers/users excited about it?* Value. Early customers, and customers from later periods, appreciate value. The value of a collection comes from its completeness. The greater body of work makes the offerings of project more complete, more thorough, more worthy, and more modern solutions. The volume of new content on the internet is staggering. This flood of data, issues, and ideas needs to be controlled, to a degree, with automation. Robots crafted for wikis and web spiders that are customized for certain, localized markets for a redeployement of webs of links, hold the highest hope for staying current. Wikis, a vital part of the internet, have been fully reliant upon volunteer editing. However, new projects just entering the marketplace today, can not attract the number of necessary volunteer editor hours at start-up that is necessary to build from scratch. The value of comes with its robust software development that produces a suite of tools and utilities to continually generate wiki content. The investment of human editing time can be greatly reduced. And, the boundaries of the wiki's pages and mission can be greatly appreciated form those who have devoted hours and efforts to generate existing content. So, the value of what already exists is appreciated with the as a later arrival. ---- 5.) Who do you envision using your product?* Media creators * Newspaper companies ** Post-Gazette ** City Paper ** South Pittsburgh Reporter * TV News ** KDKA TV ** WTAE TV ** WPXI TV ** PCN TV * Radio stations and shows ** KDKA Radio's Marty Griffin show ** KQV ** WMNY, 1360AM * Syndicated radio talk shows ** Free Talk Live ** NPR's All Things Considered * Bloggers ** PghComet.blogspot.com ** Mark Rauterkus & Running Mates * Podcasters ** * Video Podcasters ** Reason TV ** Larry Lessig * Educational outlets and School Districts ** Pittsburgh Public Schools ** Catholic Schools ** Private Schools ** Language teachers * Our wiki and other wiki owners ** Community leaders * Political folks ** Informed voters ** Want-a-be candidates ** candidates, ** elected officials, ** journalists * Economic Development folks *** South Side Local Development Corporation * Business *** Letter to Editor authors *** Letter to Editor readers * Consumers ** Researchers of neighborhoods for business investments ** Researchers of neighborhoods for home and life investments Advertisers * Since Wikia.com has advertising content, advertisers will be using the products too. Amazon.com's Kindle readers * The new ebook reader from Amazon.com, now includes free wireless access to Wikipedia.org. can join that platform too. ** The selection of titles in the Kindle store continues to grow daily as new digital books, magazines, newspapers, and even blogs are being added. As of October 2008, there are: ***Kindle Books (191,250) ***Kindle Newspapers (26) ***Kindle Blogs (1004) ***Kindle Magazines & Journals (18) ***Kindle wikis, seemingly only 1. * Rebecca Cooper, author and teacher of the Kindle Exposed Course, reports that topic areas are covered in three of the top five types of hot selling Kindle ebooks for Kindle eBook Readers are: # Cooking # Health related. Fitness, exercise, even ebooks about specific health related issues are great sellers. A topic area. # Recreation. Fishing, camping, hiking, golfing, sports in general all seem to sell well. A topic area. # Hobbies and Crafts -- How To Type books such as, "How To Make a Quilt from T-Shirts" # Current Events. Right now, "How to Save on Gas" and Financial Recovery type ebooks are selling very well. A topic area. ---- 6.) Who are your potential competitors? Why are you better than them?* is sure to have competitors when seeking to obtain venture capital investments. : will have to compete to get the attention and access investors for more limited funding to help fuel future growth. In the marketplace, because of the open-source nature of the content on the wikis, we'll face competitors with aims of producing closed, proprietary content. So, copyright publishers could be deemed a potential competitor. : An encyclopedia company, (i.e., Britanica), or an Almanac publisher (Farmers' Almanack) could be a competitive threat if it was seeking to catalog opinions from all range of perspectives. : NBC Sports, a television network with a contractual exclusive rights in specific markets to events, such as the 2010 Olympics, could be a potential competitor to w:c:AforAthlete. Google would be an possible competitor: * Google sells advertising. The wiki pages from has advertising too. * Google would be a possible competitor for search engine utilization. Google has its own search and Wikia.com has its own search too. * Google could be a competitor for the people who surf the internet. Google is a great source for finding information on the web. As a person researches an issue, that person could go to Google to find information. ** Other search engine providers could be called competitors too: *** Yahoo, AskJeeves, etc. ---- 7.) How do you plan to make money from your product and when do you anticipate generating revenue?* * Subscriptions * Newspaper investors * Value added special sales ** Contract with Lenovo for the 2012 Olympics * Retail sales of products ** Buy a book / CD / DVD, A for Athlete * Bulk sales promotions * Consulting ** Leagues ** Private label wikis *** Industry groups, etc. Technology 8.) Describe the system architecture and the toolsets you plan on using to develop the product (e.g. operating environments, languages, databases, etc.).* Text dominates with . : The wiki framework is open source. All the code is available for review so one core element of the technology puzzle is clearly evident and visible without the need to reverse engineer. : Text also drives a large part of the content that is created and posted elsewhere. The tools of , at a simple level, simply deploys cut-and-paste to migrate content and pointers (URLs that are also text chunks) from newspapers, blogs and other wikis to the Fix Network. : Scripts and software tools, both open source and not, that handle text can be deployed. :: RunRev :: PERL :: OpenOffice.org macros ' Operations' (i.e., the manufacturing process) of includes specific steps. First, content needs to be scraped. Second, the scraped bits need to be parsed. Third, the parsed bits need to be uploaded and published. :To scrape is to gather and harvest content for the . Freedictionary.com says scrape is: To remove (an outer layer, for example) from a surface by forceful strokes of an edged or rough instrument: scraped the wallpaper off before painting the wall. * tools need to be strong and forceful in the extraction of content. ** Gems and insights can be buried at the end of an article or a 3-hour talk show. Easy Scrape: ::* A simple way to scrape content is to fetch it from a RSS feed. can get content from news-reader feeds on regular basis. Harder Scrape: :::* In the wake Hurricane Katrina, as millions of people were displaced, many volunteers sprang into action to help re-connect people. Lists of refugees (i.e., the names of the people stranded at shelters), travelers on mass-exodus buses headed to other cities, and all sorts of other name, date and location insights were scraped from wherever they could be found. Newspapers printed names. Red Cross shelters posted lists. Church basement boarders were revealed. ---- 9.) What is your anticipated timeline for developing your product during the five month program (include prototype, alpha, or limited beta test, if applicable)? Can you describe your plans for gathering user feedback during AlphaLab? Do you own the rights to your technology?* ---- 10.) What do you anticipate to be the most challenging technical hurdle(s)?* Pulling large data chunks from the wikis onto localized storage containers will be a challenge with time and space. : The localized storage containers are sure to change throughout time. :: Upgrades of tech devices are sure to keep the production folks nimble. Burning data to a CD, DVD, Blue-Ray Disk, USB Drive, Kindle ebook (from Amazon), laptop, tablet, iPod, hand-held iPhone or new as of October 2008, Google Phone, is going to be present moving targets. What will be available in London at the time of the 2012 Olympics for our Field Guide to the 2012 Olympics is hard to predict. : The time elements with data is sure to present a challenge. Getting updates from the wikis to the localized storage containers is going present a challenge. :: The content that is deployed at the start of the Olympics is going to need fresh layers of news to reside with archived content. ::: When watching the Olympic marathon at the mile 20 mark, it would be great to have the field guide report the 10-mile split times, in real time. The combination of twitter, news feeds, real-time updates and first hand accounts will need to merge and freshen existing data hosted externally from the network / internet. The most challenging hurdles for are not expected to be technical ones. Rather, the most serious challenges might prove to be legal challenges and the associated turf wars that could spawn from content ownership and re-use of factual data. : NBC has the television rights for broadcasting Olympic competitions in North America. The video we obtain through our sources could be uploaded to field guides draw the attention of NBC lawyers. ---- Team ---- 11.) List all of the team members' names, education, work experience, and accomplishments. Please note if your team has previous history working together and describe the project/work context. Upload team resumes here and save the files in the following format: Last Name_First Name _ Resume.doc or .pdf (Example: Smith_Mary_ Resume.pdf).* File limited to .zip, .doc, .docx, .ppt, .pptx, .xls, .xlsx, .pdf 12.) Please describe each team member’s expected role during AlphaLab and how their background is applicable. What other commitments (e.g. employment, consulting, school/education, etc.) do the founders have during the duration of the program, if any? Please provide as much detail as possible, including timing/hours of said commitments. ---- 13.) Will every member of the team have employment authorization to work and/or manage the new company should it be selected into the AlphaLab program? If no, please explain. If yes, what is the form of employment authorization? (please provide details for each team member, i.e., US citizen, permanent resident, employment authorization, H-1B status, etc.) ---- Current Status ---- 14.) Describe the progress you have made to date on your product, including the stage of product development (e.g. lines of code, functionality, built prototype) and any interaction with potential customers/users.* Two wikis, FixPA (political) and A for Athlete, (sports) moved to Wikia.com in May 2008. :As of October 2008, both wikis have more than 1,000 pages of content. ---- 15.) What else would you like us to know about you and your company? Please include relevant references or links or upload any additional documents here and save the files in the following format: Last Name_First Name_Type of Supplemental Material.doc or pdf or ppt or xls (Example: Smith_Mary_ Executive Summary.doc). Category:4Rs